Through-Line: LBPD spends more time and money racially profiling folks in North and Central (these two geographic locations are there by example, they could also be District 8 & 9) Long Beach than they spend actually protecting the community. Most of this profiling is conducted via traffic stops. These stops do not make the community safer, and they mean the LBPD spends less time responding to calls for service.
Communities of color in Long Beach have historically been subjected to over-policing and racial profiling by law enforcement. This trend continues today where people of color are more likely to be stopped by LBPD for minor reasons to profile and harass them.
Examining data from the Racial & Identity Profiling Act (RIPA), we find that LBPD spends most of their time on stopping people for purported traffic reasons. These stops do not make communities safer. Instead, they subject low-income communities of Long Beach to undue contact with the police. These are the same communities that have historically had the fewest resources for other services in the city. The inequities in and ineffectiveness of these practices demand investments in alternatives.
We find that LBPD spends more time on stops made during their patrol time (referred to as officer-initiated stops) than stops made in response to calls from the community. The type of stops and results of these stops show evidence of racial profiling.
Nearly 80% of time officers spent on stops are spent on officer-initiated stops. This translates to just 1 in 5 hours spent on responding to calls for service, or concerns from the community.
Officers are required to report the reason why they stopped a person and the result of that stop, e.g. whether a person received a citation, was arrested, or no consequence or action was necessary. We analyze the time spent on officer-initiated stops by stop reason and then by stop result to determine if officers are making stops that help prevent a serious threat to community safety. Stops are made mainly for minor traffic reasons that are resolved with a citation or warning, or no action at all. Then, we narrow in on traffic stops that resulted in no action to see if traffic stops of people of color are more likely to result in some consequence for safety. In the end, these stops show more evidence of racial profiling than protecting the safety of communities. While LBPD is more likely to stop Black people and other people of color, a sizable share of these stops are traffic stops have no or minor implications for community safety. In 2019, over 1 in 5 traffic stops of Black people resulted in no action.
Citation | Percent | Total |
|---|---|---|
22350 VC - UNSAFE SPEED:PREVAIL COND (I) 54106 | 27.81 | 4,296 |
4000(A)(1) VC - NO REG:VEH/TRAILER/ETC (I) 54657 | 7.89 | 1,219 |
22450(A) VC - FAIL STOP VEH:XWALK/ETC (I) 54167 | 5.67 | 876 |
21453(A) VC - FAIL STOP LINE/ETC AT RED (I) 54098 | 5.03 | 777 |
21461(A) VC - DRIVER FAIL OBEY SIGN/ETC (I) 54146 | 5.02 | 776 |
People of color are more likely to be impacted by this high occurrence of officer-initiated stops. As a part of RIPA data collection, officers are required to report the race of the person they stopped, based on the officer’s perception. The data show LBPD officers stop Black, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and Middle Eastern or South African peoples in Long Beach at the highest rates. In 2019, LBPD officers stopped 169 Black people for every one thousand Black people in Long Beach. And while White people make up a much larger share of the Long Beach population, more Black people are stopped by LBPD than White people.
A pretextual stop occurs when an officer stops a person for a relatively minor violation that does not necessarily require a stop, but an officer stops the person based on “hunch” that they possess evidence of crime, and the minor (unharmful) violation is identified to permit an otherwise illegitimate investigation. Pretextual stops are the main pathway for racial profiling because those “hunches” are often based on personal biases.
To understand how often pretextual traffic stops occur, we analyzed how often traffic stops, what LBPD spends most of their time on, result in no action by race. Individuals who were perceived as having two or more races, or as Black, had the highest rate of traffic stops with no resulting action. This is indicative of a pretextual stop because the fact that the traffic stop resulted in no action indicates that the stop was not based off any evidence of danger or crime in the first place. (placeholder text)
We map the approximate location of officer-initiated stops by council district, race, and result to see how stops are distributed throughout the city. In 2019, Council Districts 1, 6, and 7 had the highest counts and rates of stops per population. Across Council Districts, people of color experience the highest stop rates. Higher stop rates do not translate to a greater likelihood of stops that are a risk to the community. In Council Districts 8, 9, 1, and 6, a higher share of stops result in no action. These districts have some of the highest rates of people of color in the city.
Across Council Districts, LBPD stops people of color at the highest rates. Plotting stops by race and council districts, we find a greater density of stops of Black and Latinx people. In 2019, in six out of nine Council Districts, Black people had the highest stop rates. Latinx, MESA, and NHPI people also experience the highest rate of stops in at least one of each Council District.
Race/ethnicity: AIAN=American Indian
or Alaska Native, NHPI=Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, MESA=Middle
Eastern or South Asian; Observations by race may overlap in the point
density map.
Catalyst
California’s calculations based on City of Long Beach’s Police Stop Data
(2019); Catalyst
California, 2023. Analysis for all officer-initiated
stops.
More stops in a community does not coincide with a greater likelihood of preventing or detecting serious crime. We calculated the percent of hours in each Council District that resulted in stops with no action. Council Districts 9,8,1, and 6 have higher rates of stops where an officer found no reason to take action, or even cite, a person. In Council District 9, nearly 1 in 5 hours (18.9%) spent on officer-initiated stops resulted in no action.
Catalyst California’s calculations based on City of Long Beach’s Police Stop Data (2019); Catalyst California, 2023. Analysis for all officer-initiated stops.
A common narrative may be that traffic stops lead to safer streets with fewer injuries and less crime. In reality, communities of color are often the communities with higher rates of injuries from traffic collisions and profiling by police. Comparing traffic collisions to traffic stops shows officer-initiated stops do not necessarily make roadways safer nor do they correlate to areas with higher risk of road injuries. These stops are also ineffective in preventing serious crime. LBPD overwhelming conducts unnecessary searches of people through traffic stops, finding nothing of consequence. People of color bare the largest impact of these stops.
We compared 2019 traffic stops to high-injury corridors and intersections identified by the Safe Streets Long Beach initiative. The initiative identified these high-injury corridors and intersections based on 2013-17 data, but they remain the initiative’s action plan to guarantee equity in increasing road safety. Council Districts 1 and 6 have the highest rate of traffic stops, but they also have the highest concentration of high-injury motor, pedestrian, and bike networks. Rather than improving safety in these highly impacted communities, officer-initiated traffic stops can lead to greater harm by more contact and exposure to the police.
Catalyst California’s calculations based on City of Long Beach’s Police Stop Data (2019); Catalyst California, 2023. Analysis for all officer-initiated stops for traffic violations.
Instead of creating safer communities, officers use routine traffic stops as a means to profile and harass people of color. LBPD officers use routine traffic stops to search people with the purported intent of preventing more serious crime. This practice yields ineffective results. The majority of searches, nearly 4 in 5 across races, lead to no contraband or evidence found for a crime. Nearly 90% of searches done during traffic stops of MESA, Black, Multi-racial, Asian, and AIAN individuals result in no contraband or evidence found.